


Second Sight

by zelda_zee



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-01-04
Updated: 2009-01-04
Packaged: 2017-10-22 09:11:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,789
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/236437
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zelda_zee/pseuds/zelda_zee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>At night, the angel comes to her in dreams.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Second Sight

At night, the angel comes to her in dreams. She sees its blazing light, ancient and fearless and her eyes widen to take it in, to encompass all of its staggering and awful beauty. Light rays pass through her corneas, her irises contract, the image focuses on her retinas. She’s seeing it - _really_ seeing it, not in the way she sees now, shapes and sounds and shadows in her mind, the glow of aura, the steady guiding hand of intuition and the deep sense of _knowing_ that’s always been strong in her, but never stronger than it is now.

No, in her dreams she sees with the eyes she was born with. She sees the angel’s purity and its strength and its beauty, and she hates it.

  
The Winchesters call her and she’s willing enough to help out. She doesn't hold a grudge, even if they were the ones who brought that damned angel down upon her. Bobby’s been the best friend a girl could have, and they’re like sons to him, so for Bobby’s sake, if nothing else, she’ll do her best.

She sees the brothers differently now, though she won’t soon forget their pretty faces - or their pretty everything elses. Now, though, she can see the bottomless and bitter sadness that lives inside Dean and the dark, roiling of something evil inside Sam. They bring with them a demon and, as it turns out, an angel. Pamela thinks, on balance, she’d rather take her chances with the demon.

She’s a girl who’s got clear boundaries so, much as she likes the Winchester boys, she’s only willing to go so far for them. She does her part and gets the hell out.

Later, Bobby calls her. The angel went back to heaven, la-tee-da. A happy ending for one and all, except Pamela wasn't born yesterday and she knows better than that.

  
It’s months later when the angel comes to her. She’s deep in trance and not even aware of when it arrives. It takes a few minutes for her to come out of it enough to realize what she's feeling, a few more to bring her heart rate and respiration to the point of being able to move. She wakes and listens. The old house is silent around her. She stretches her awareness and bumps hard against a presence, here, in the room with her. It’s standing quite still, looking out the window. She knows there’s a human form there, but all she can sense is light.

She breathes, once, twice.

“I didn’t want to startle you,” it says. Human voice, deep, pleasant, a little raspy. Male.

“What do you want, Castiel?” She gets to her feet, carefully. She doesn't want to stumble while this thing is watching her.

There’s a pause. She waits, trying not to shut down. She doesn’t like the fact that it’s here one little bit, but she needs to keep her awareness focused or she’ll lose track of it. “We’ve met before,” Castiel says.

“Not an occasion I’d be likely to forget,” Pamela says dryly.

“I regret that,” it says. “You demanded I show myself. You would not be denied.”

“I’m used to getting what I want,” Pamela smiles bitterly. “I’m not in the habit of taking no for an answer.”

“I did not know what would happen.” Castiel sounds sad, but Pamela doesn’t put much credit in it. Angels and demons counterfeit emotion – sometimes they convince themselves they're actually feeling them. She'd bet the farm that Castiel believes he knows what emotion is - that he thinks he's feeling it right now. “I had not revealed myself before and I did not yet understand –”

“Look,” Pamela says. “If you’re here to apologize, just do it and get out. I’m not a chick who gets wet at the thought of being touched by an angel. Been there, done that, and it wasn’t pretty.”

“I’m not here to apologize,” Castiel says. “I’m here to return your sight to you, if you’ll let me.”

Pamela feels the shock register on her face, and the sudden jackrabbit pounding of her heart. “My… sight,” she breathes. “You – what?” She must not be a very good psychic after all, because she wouldn't have predicted this.

“I wish to return your sight,” Castiel repeats. There’s so little inflection in its voice. Without seeing its face, it’s difficult to tell what the creature is thinking. “It is within my power to do that.”

“Okay…” Pamela is buying time. She hadn’t expected this, had never appealed to gods or angels – or for that matter, to the devil and his demons – to restore her sight. That’s not the way she operates. She’s got her pride, and she won’t waste her breath begging merciless automatons for something they’d never grant a person like her in a million years. “Why would you do that? I’m not exactly on your side.”

“The fault is mine.” Castiel is walking towards her. She can sense its light, moving through the room – blue, gold, silver – she could not say what color it is. All colors and none of them. “I wish to make amends.”

Pamela cannot help the little smile that crooks her lip. “Not very angelic of you,” she murmurs.

“You have a poor opinion of angels.”

“I do,” she agrees. “With reason.”

“Yes.” There’s a silence, then it says. “Will you allow me to grant you this?”

The odd thing is that she hesitates. Who would hesitate to be able to see when they are blind? But her blindness has brought her things too – sight of a different kind, clear vision that sees into the heart of things. She doesn’t want to lose that, but _god_ , does she want to see again.

She swallows hard, squares her shoulders, nods. Then she thinks maybe it needs an unequivocal agreement, so she manages, “Yes.”

She inhales sharply as she feels its palms placed over her eyes. She has a brief awareness of warm, callused hands before there's a flash of light, a flare of intense pain in both eyes that lessens instantly until it fades away entirely. Castiel removes his hands and she doesn’t dare breathe, doesn’t move.

“It’s done.” She doesn’t so much as twitch. Pamela’s not overly familiar with fear, but at this moment, she realizes, she’s more afraid than she’s been in her entire life. “Open your eyes, Pamela.”

She does. At first there’s just a blur of colors and shapes, a kaleidoscope of images that her brain can’t make sense of. She tries to focus and it makes her eyes burn, but even this is more than she’d thought she’d ever have. Color floods her senses until she’d swear she can _taste_ it.

When her vision clears and the shapes resolve themselves into what she can recognize and quantify and put names to, she sees that there is a man standing in front of her, watching her with profound attention. He stands very still, more still than a human ever could. It’s a shock to see Castiel as a _man_. Both in their first encounter and in this one, she’d not had any sense of him having a gender.

She didn’t cry the whole time she was blind – couldn’t, even if she’d wanted to, which she didn’t – and she doesn’t cry now. Tears would only blind her and she never wants to be blind again.

Pamela looks around, at her house, still the same and beautiful in its dust and clutter. Her plants, her books, her mother’s piano, the sunlight slanting in through the window, the portrait Jesse painted of her. She can see it all, every detail.

She doesn’t know what to say to Castiel. A part of her feels like she shouldn’t thank him for returning to her something that he stole. But in the end she does. He didn’t have to do this, after all.

She sends out a tendril, just an inquiry to see how deep into him she can get. Not far, as it turns out. His lips twitch into a little smile as he feels it and turns her gently away. “That tickles,” he says softly.

Pamela shrugs, unapologetic. She’s fascinated though, that he smiled. That’s not what she would expect of an angel. He’s actually kind of charming, she decides, surprised at herself. Charming and sad and sweet. Terrible too, of course. But she’d never have seen this side of him without her sight. She wonders how much of it is the body he inhabits (a very nice body, with a very nice face – the angel chose well) and how much of it is Castiel, or if at this point, the two have mixed to the point that it’s impossible to tell them apart.

“So, did you have to get permission for this?” she asks.

“No.” He looks away and for a moment it’s as if he’s somewhere else, very far away, then he's right back in her presence, eyes the color of nightfall boring into her. “We have free will, to a point. I'd have come sooner, but I've been a little busy, with the apocalypse and all. This is the first chance I’ve had for – personal business." He steps back, putting more distance between them. "It’s also the last chance I’ll have.”

“You’ll be going back now that it's over,” she says, and despite what he’s just done for her, Pamela thinks it’ll be a very good thing for the world when the angels go back to heaven where they belong.

He flinches though, looks quickly away, to the floor. There’s a tense, unhappy hunch to his shoulders, and though his face is partially hidden Pamela can see a tightness at the corner of his mouth and eye. For an angel, he's very expressive.

“Something like that,” he murmurs, and suddenly she _knows_ with utter certainty what he has planned and for the first time she thinks of him without rancor, with something approaching compassion, and she wonders if maybe the sadness she saw in his eyes is real after all. “Good-bye, Pamela.”

“Good-bye, Castiel,” she replies. “Don’t be a stranger.” He stops and turns back, and she smiles at him with unfeigned empathy. “Come ‘round and see me after you fall.”

He meets her eyes for a long moment, then nods once and he’s gone.

Pamela closes her eyes and sighs, a slow smile spreading across her face. She wants to go outside, to see the sky and the sun and the green of grass and trees. She wants to feel the shape of her life shift to encompass this new reality. When she opens her eyes the world is still there, waiting for her, and she wants to see every little bit of it.


End file.
